It's Just A Little Seed Pod
This pyramid had more twist and turns than an early M. Night Shyamalan movie. We had been slowly moving through a veritable corkscrew of hallways while keeping our senses open for the possibility of danger. So far, all we had sensed was the growing smell of … dirt. Soon, the hallway opened up into a large room, obscured by vines suspended from the ceiling and growing up to form hedges that were thick enough you couldn’t see past them. It was a maze—a hedge maze. Whoever was tending to the maze wasn’t doing a good job, though. There was dirt and dead vines all over the ground. And barbed vines stuck out from unkempt bushes all over the place. Maybe the place had been abandoned. For once, could this just be an empty room? We probably weren’t that lucky. So, we decided to be as quiet as possible as we made our way through the maze. Hugging the outer wall, we made our way around half the room when we heard snuffling, snorting noises. Varis peeked around a corner to see a huge tusked boar, nosing through some dead vines on the floor. Carefully, he snuck from one hedge to the next. We all followed suit. Praxis tripped on a root and sprawled across the floor, laying still a moment in hopes that the boar hadn’t heard him. The boar snorted loudly, looked at Praxis and then turned back to his vines. We continued on, making a turn to the right. That’s when Gar, who was bringing up the rear, let out a cry. We turned to see a strange man pulling him into the hedge! “An Arborean,” Praxis, of all people, confirmed. “They don’t like fire.” Varis attempted to find the opening the man had used, but all he saw were thorn-covered vines. We could hear Gar struggling against the elf—at least I guessed he was some kind of elf because he was speaking in Elven. He thought we were some type of intruders, here to destroy his home. He wasn’t happy about that. “Let go of our friend and let us leave or I’ll set this place on fire.” I had no idea what the Arborean was doing to Gar, but I wanted my friend out of there. A door magically opened in the maze and out came the tree-man and Gar. “What is your purpose here?” “We’re trying to find our way out of this place,” I answered. “Treasure,” Varis stated, matter-of-fact. The Arborean eyed us curiously. I wished Varis could just keep his trap closed for once. Since everyone else fell silent, I took that as my leave to keep talking. “We’re explorers. We heard about an ancient pyramid that had just been sighted. Exploration parties were coming to explore it, and we followed suit. We’ve been trapped here for 3 days now, and in every room something has attacked us. We’re just trying to make it out of here alive.” He eyed us for a moment, probably deciding whether or not we were being truthful. “Come, then. The Priest will see if you are worthy of our trust.” Out of the vines, two more tree-men appeared to escort us past a room with a deep pit. A Satyr slowly walked around the edge as writhing vine creatures moved deep within the pit. My pulse raced as we walked past the large pit with its impossibly steep, gravely sides. I hadn’t had much luck with pits since we arrived here and was thankful when we left that room. The next room smelled heavily of dirt and decay. There were four monoliths in the center of the room. A large sentient tree stood in the center, his oaken eyes watching us. To his right, a large bear sat on its haunches. Behind him was a priest standing before an altar as he chanted. Once he saw us, he stopped and approached. “My Lord, these adventurers seek a truce. I have brought them to you to see if they are earnest.” The strange tree-man turned to me, and I—once again—explained our purposes here. “I can offer you safe passage through my lands … if you defeat my foes in return.” The man they called Camnor replied. “Who are your enemies? We’ve defeated every enemy we’ve come up against so far on this level. Perhaps we’ve already killed them.” “The Charnal Lord and Gharash Vren’s band of bandits. They have been terrorizing my lands and slaying my people. I want them dead. Swear an oath to my ancestors and you are free to go without harm.” “What type of oath?” Varis questioned. “A simple ritual. I will make a small slice in your skin. Within the cut I will place a small seed pod.” “Place a seed … in my arm?” That didn’t seem like a good idea. “Will it grow?” “No.” “Will we become like you?” Camnor scoffed. “If only you were so lucky. The seed will neither grow, nor will it harm you.” I tried to think of anything I had read about such a ritual, but came up blank. He didn’t seem to be lying. I looked to my friends and then to the large bear and the sentient tree. “I’ll do it.” I volunteered to go first, looking at my friends and wordlessly trying to ask that they intervene should something go terribly wrong. The dagger’s slice stung, but no more than expected. Camnor placed the seed inside the wound and held his hand over my arm. My skin began to grow hot and I could feel the flesh knitting back together. When he removed his hand, all that was there was the red pucker of a wound and the raised bump of the seed pod. There was no pain. I felt … well, like me. Gar was next, followed by Praxis. I could tell Varis was going to be stubborn just by the expression on his face. “You’re not putting anything inside of me.” His hands were crossed over his chest and his expression told me he was quite serious. “Come on, Varis. It’s just a ritual. All of us are fine.” I tried to plead with him, but I didn’t think it was much use. “No. I’m not going to do it.” “Then you have broken our covenant and are not under our protection. Get out of my sight.”Camnor dismissed Varis. “So.” Varis shrugged and walked away. “Remember that place where the body was, with the electricity,” I whispered under my breath, hoping Varis would know to meet us there. Camnor’s demeanor changed from indifference to threatening. “If you are not under our protection, you are our enemy.” He turned to us. “As our enemy, you must kill him.” Gar, Praxis, and I looked to one another. I didn’t know how we were going to get out of this one. Sure, Varis wasn’t my favorite guy, but I wasn’t about to kill him, either. Camnor demanded action, and we were standing still. Two of his tree people followers prodded us to move. Having no other choice but start a fight right here, we went. Wide eyed, I passed the pit with the vine monsters at the bottom and the satyr standing guard. We entered the maze room again to find Varis in the center, casually making his way through the tangled vines. Slowly, I pulled my bow from my back and notched an arrow. I didn’t know if I should make the first move. Should I shoot an arrow in warning for Varis to run? He wasn’t the running type, and the tree-men would immediately turn on us. “Varis, run!” Praxis beat me to it, and everything exploded into action around me. “You’ve betrayed the oath,” the tree-man shouted, drawing his curved blade. The other tree-man drew his sword too and the boar let out an angry grunt, preparing to charge. Praxis looked up from his task of trying to cut the seed pod out of his arm and rushed to help Varis. Unfortunately for him, Praxis was the closest enemy to the boar. The beast charged the Halfling, knocking his feet out from underneath him. A tree-man emerged from the vines beside Varis and swung at him, thankfully missing. Gar did his best to hide us with his invisibility. I used everything I had to push the enemy back while trying to stay away from the business end of the boar. There was a cackle in the distance, and I hoped Varis hadn’t found more trouble. With my healing aura up, I only hoped that if he had, he was close enough to heal himself. Praxis was facing off with the boar, and Varis had been pushed back into the clearing, facing off one Arborean and an ugly hag. Gar and I were trying to deal with the other two tree people, while Gar also charmed the boar into running the opposite direction. That bought us a little bit of time to help out Varis, who was starting to look a little ragged. One by one, the enemies fell. First an Arborean, then another. Then the boar fell faster than we thought, and the hag finally stopped her wailing. The last Arborean retreated into the bushes. Though we tried to tail him, but the thorns and the thick brush made that nearly impossible. Plus, we were exhausted. The fight had taken a lot out of us, and we were in need of a long rest. Not wanting to venture into new territory that was likely infested with things that wanted to kill us, we retreated back into the winding hallway to the north of the hedge maze. Once we had settled down, I got to work trying to pry the seed pod from my arm. The sight of my own blood was making me woozy, though, especially being that I was the one drawing it. Gar studied his wound, and with a quick flick of his wrist, he had opened the cut, found the seed pod, and removed it. Thankfully, he was willing to help me remove my seed pod, too. There in the hallway, we spent an uninterrupted night with the same strange dreams that seemed to plague us every time we slept in this place. Each night, the dream was vaguely similar, but not exactly the same. When we awoke, Varis was set on revenge. He wanted to storm back into Camnor’s room and face the Priest and his followers head on. Gar, Praxis, and I wanted to sway him away from the fight. We knew where they were and could always come back later. There still seemed to be much of this fortress we hadn’t explored. Especially considering we hadn’t run into two of Camnor’s greatest enemies yet. Who knew? Maybe Camnor’s enemies could prove to be allies against him. There was only one way to find out, and that was to explore more of this level of the pyramid. So, at the end of the winding hallway, we took a right. That led us back into the main room where we had defeated a worm and an Ettin. That was also where we found Vyrellis—who had been oddly quiet for some time. Taking a different branch off of the main room, we traveled down a fifty foot hallway that ended in a ‘T.’ To the right was the familiar smell of dirt. To the left was the sound of running water. Well, it appeared that Varis might get his revenge after all. If we had reentered the hedge maze, we might have faced an ambush. However, coming at them from a different direction might catch them off-guard. We decided to proceed. It wasn’t long before the hallway opened up into another smaller hedge maze. This one was all bush and no thorn, thankfully. We were no more than a few feet into the room when a small, ugly, lighting-fast creature ran up to Varis and sliced his calf with a dagger. He then retreated back out of sight, that little bugger. Praxis pulled out his gun and aimed at the little grey creature, finally hitting him. That’s when more tree-men appeared. There were three of them this time. One seemed familiar. He was probably the same one who fled from us in the other hedge maze. We had had time to rest and heal, and so had he. Things were going pretty well so far. We were trying to take care of the Quickling—that’s what Gar called him—before he slowly bled us. The little bugger had even lashed out at me. I managed to hold him in place after that long enough for my friends to hit him. It wasn’t long until the boys had him out of the way. Gar’s aura would prove effective again, and he and I worked in conjunction to keep the Arboreans where we wanted them … which was right in between Praxis and Varis. We managed to defeat the remaining tree-men with little more than a few scratches. After a short rest, we were ready to continue our exploration of this level of the pyramid. ~Zaly For next week's session summary, click here.